


The Bookship

by clearinghouse



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Machines, Magic, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearinghouse/pseuds/clearinghouse
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley have survived Armageddon, yet Crowley suspects the Big One has still yet to come. Fortunately, Aziraphale has a crazy plan on how to stop it: by converting the bookshop into a steam-powered airship.Reverse AU. Steampunk AU.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	The Bookship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ierin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ierin/gifts).



> This is an exchange gift for the Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019. This was written for [starry-shake](https://starry-shake.tumblr.com/) AKA Ierin, who requested fluff and "some swap au in a steampunk world." 
> 
> Happy Holidays, Ierin!

The antique brass bell hanging over the door of the bookshop rang as the angel entered his friend’s shop. 

The clean and well-dressed angel was clothed in an almost entirely white ensemble, with a white top hat, a white tailcoat, and a red waistcoat and necktie, nearly the same red colour as his hair. There was a pair of goggles on the top hat. His shoes were of a hardy leather. Over his shoulder, he was carrying a large and unmarked leather satchel.

It had been six months since Crowley had entered the bookshop to find it destroyed by a violent flood and his best friend nowhere to be found. That had come as a horrible shock, one that the angel would never forget. It was always a relief to return and find the bookshop in good health, even if he never said so out loud.

The metal hook that hung by the door was waiting expectantly nearby, ready to take Crowley’s hat and coat from him. But Crowley, in very indecorous fashion, did not remove his coat or his bag or even his hat. For the moment, he merely remained where he was, waiting for the customers to leave before he did anything.

His sharp brown eyes scanned over the familiar bookshop. He took in the sight of the sliding bookcases that were on rails, and of the customers who were walking around in their fine suits and dresses. There were only a few customers present, but Crowley needed there to be none.

His best friend was standing by one of the customers, in front of one of the sliding bookcases. Aziraphale had been talking to the customer with great zeal but had stopped talking at the ring of the door’s bell. His dark, round-framed spectacles were now looking in Crowley’s direction. 

“Oh, dear. Is it time already?” the demon muttered to himself. He lifted up the old-fashioned pocket watch that he wore on his own waistcoat to check the time. Then he cried out, “My apologies, everyone, but we are closed now! Please come again tomorrow!”

The startled customers trickled slowly out of the shop. They streamed past Crowley, who politely stepped aside for them. A couple of the humans gave the angel a nasty look. They were offended that he was still wearing his hat even though he was indoors, which was unthinkable in their society which placed so much importance on propriety and good manners. However, he coolly ignored them. 

Aziraphale none-too-gently shooed out the humans with frivolous hand gestures, a process that Crowley watched with amusement. 

The book-loving demon was dressed haphazardly, as always. Unlike Crowley, who dressed with style, Aziraphale wore whatever pieces of clothing he happened to like most at the moment, regardless of whether those pieces looked well together. Therefore, he was wearing vertically striped silver and gold trousers, a charcoal-coloured tailcoat, a gold and black paisley waistcoat, and dark silver two-inch pumps. 

Aziraphale wasn’t currently wearing his favourite black top hat. It was a hat that had gears on the side, for the purpose of controlling the automatic umbrella that was spring-loaded inside, although Crowley had never seen him use the umbrella. Crowley was pretty sure Aziraphale just liked how the gears looked.

The demon closed the door firmly on the last exiting human. He shut the blinds and switched the open sign to closed. “I do apologise,” he said as he hustled his way around the windows. “I quite lost track of the time.”

“It’s no problem,” Crowley said, dropping his satchel to the ground. “You could have stayed open a little longer if you were busy.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of doing that. What we’re doing is much too important.” 

“I think what you mean is, you like having the excuse to kick your customers out.”

“Both of those can be true.” Aziraphale closed the last window. He waited a moment, then he asked quietly, “Is anyone else here?”

Crowley focused, sensing for any angels that might be hiding in the vicinity. “No, none of my lot.” He turned around and fastened the three differently-shaped locks that were on the door. “Yours?”

“Not a soul. We’re all alone, my dear.” 

“Good. Time to get to work, then.” Crowley spun a large metal wheel on the wall next to the door. Immediately, an iron shutter dropped over the door and the windows.

Aziraphale gave a sarcastic sigh. “Yes, time to get to work.” He kicked over a fuzzy rug on the floor, revealing a slim black lever concealed within a long and thin recess in the flooring. “And after such a long day at the bookshop, too. But a demon’s work is never done, is it?”

“Hey, don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you.” Crowley removed the goggles from his hat and pulled them over his forehead. “How about dinner at the Ritz afterwards, as a reward for your hard day’s work?”

Aziraphale gasped. “Are you tempting me to dinner?” He acted scandalised, bringing his hand to his chest. “Why, my dear, that’s supposed me to be my job!” 

Crowley grinned and played along. “It seemed to me like you had enough jobs already. What kind of angel would I be if I didn’t take one of those jobs off your hands?” He glanced down at his own gleaming gold pocket watch, which was a much newer model than that of his friend. “Looks like a reservation just opened up at oh-nineteen-hundred.”

“Did it? Oh, well then. If you insist.” Aziraphale smiled wide. “It’s a date.” He gripped the lever with both hands and squeezed the release mechanism. Then, in one grand motion, he pulled the lever down all the way.

A large metal pole shot down noisily from the centre of the ceiling, straight through the middle of the public area of the bookshop. The metal pole was made of segments which had been folded up and were now extending to their full length. Following behind it from above, a set of circular grey stairs with gears unfolded itself around the metal pole. The set of stairs clacked musically as it settled into place. 

Hanging beneath some of the steps of the stairs were dangling yellow handles, like the kind seen on the ceilings of buses. A large round chunk of the floor swung away under the floor, opening up to a hidden space below the bookshop.

Crowley finally set his hat on the hook that was hanging by the door. The hook descended slightly at the addition of the weight, then bounced up rapidly, bringing the hat by the purely mechanical action of a couple of pulleys to a nearby rack of coats and hats. As soon as the hat was gone, Crowley removed his coat, and the hook quickly dropped back down to take that as well.

While there hadn’t been a good reason for him to have kept his hat on, there was a very good reason why Crowley hadn’t let the humans see him without his coat. The fact was, underneath his coat, he was as heavily armed as a professional cracksman.

Crowley’s arms, from his fingerless gloves to his shoulders, were covered in brown leather. Nuts, bolts, and small tools lined the front of.his arms and biceps. The leather was in perfect like-new condition. He also pulled out a tool belt, which had been concealed underneath his waistcoat. He brought it to rest over the middle of the waistcoat. The tool belt coat showed off a screwdriver, a wrench, a hammer, a drill, and a mallet, all of which had features that allowed them to change size.

Aziraphale also removed his coat and gave it to the automatic metal hook. Unlike Crowley, the demon had nothing noteworthy on his arms except for his sleeve garters, which he readjusted in order to roll up his sleeves. 

The demon beamed in a friendly manner and extended a hand to the angel who was waiting for him. “Shall we?”

“Let’s,” Crowley answered like a true gentleman. He took hold of the demon’s bare hand as well as the leather satchel. 

Crowley led Aziraphale to the circular stairs. The angel jumped onto the steps first, set his large bag onto the step above him, then pulled Aziraphale on after him, hugging the demon to his breast with one hand and holding onto an overhead yellow handle in the other. 

Crowley held onto Aziraphale tightly, much more tightly than necessary, which earned him an affectionate smile from the demon. He wrapped his arms around Crowley. 

The angel declared like a cheeky lift attendant, “Going down.” He yanked the handle twice.

The stairs were spurred into motion. The gears of the stairs rolled and the stairway cascaded downward.

Slowly, the books disappeared from view and they were lowered into the first of many secret rooms.

While the bookshop wasn’t the paragon of cleanliness, the room below it was a catastrophic mess. It was a large and tall room, roughly twice the size of the main room of the bookshop. There were curved glass windows on one side, though there was nothing behind the windows except for darkness and dirt. 

One half of the level was a little cleaner than the other, but not by much. In this half, there was black stuff on the floors and gears lying unused in piles. Lying next to a workbench, there was a half-finished device resembling a small artificial satellite the size of half of a hovercar. There was a rack with several sheets of metal and spare parts that seemed to have been salvaged from several automobiles.

On the other half of the room, there was a desk with several open books, all bookmarked heavily. Some were for divine magic, some were for arcane magic, and most of them were very old. Loose sheets of notebook paper were scattered into every available spot, except for one very wide section of floor, which was heavily marked with fresh salt lines. Several houseplants dotted the area, including a couple of small ones on the desk that had thermometer-like appliances embedded into them.

The circular stairs jolted to a halt as Crowley’s step levelled with the floor of this room. It had stopped short of descending even further into the next room below. 

Aziraphale stepped out of Crowley's arms onto the floor. He took a couple of steps towards the magician's side of their workshop. 

However, Crowley followed him. “Hey, you’re not leaving my arms already, are you?” he asked slyly. “I haven’t got to hold you in forever.”

“It’s been eight hours, at the most,” Aziraphale retorted smartly, turning back around. “That hardly amounts to forever.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want me to hold you?”

“Oh, no, I’m saying nothing of the kind.” Aziraphale quickly stepped towards Crowley and fondly ran his smooth and well-lotioned palm across Crowley’s cheek. Then he brought his short arms around the angel and wrapped him in a proper hug.

Crowley happily embraced Aziraphale in kind. “That’s better.” With one gloved hand, he pressed his demon’s back to himself, warmly and closely.

“I missed you today, red velvet cake,” the demon whispered softly.

“I missed you, too, hot stuff,” the red-haired, white-suited angel whispered back. 

“I was worried about you, while you were gone.”

“You had nothing to worry about. I was prepared for anything.”

Aziraphale wasn’t so confident. “Except for a surprise visit from the other angels, dear.”

Crowley frowned. He held Aziraphale at arm’s length. Carefully, he removed the spectacles from Aziraphale’s face, tucking them into the breast pocket of Aziraphale’s waistcoat. “They won’t bother us yet, Aziraphale. Neither my lot nor yours,” Crowley said. “Not if we don’t draw their attention. It’s too soon for them to try anything.”

Aziraphale’s two golden-irised, black-slitted eyes gleamed up with concern at Crowley. “How can you be so sure? I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. I’d be hopeless without you. Sometimes, I worry so much about you.”

Crowley’s hand slipped into his demon’s hair, stroking the hair reassuringly. “Come on, Aziraphale. Don’t say things like that. Nothing’s going to happen. You know how careful I am. Besides,” he added with a laugh to raise his demon’s spirits, “I can’t let anything happen to me now. If something happened to me, who else would do all the hard labour that you don’t like doing?”

But Aziraphale only grew more worried. He pouted, then buried his face into Crowley’s chest and hugged him tightly once more. “I love you,” his muffled voice said quietly. “I love you so much.”

Crowley stopped laughing. A small and tender smile rose to his face, unseen by Aziraphale. “I love you, too.” 

For a moment, they didn’t say anything. They held each other tightly, merely reassuring each other of their presence. 

Aziraphale broke the silence. “My dear, what if our plan doesn’t work?”

“It’ll work.”

“But what if doesn’t? What if we don’t have enough magic? What if the binding circle doesn’t work, or your satellites fall, or the demons and angels come too soon and make a frightful mess of everything?”

“Simple. If that happens, we’ll fly away in our ship,” Crowley said. “We’ll live out the rest of eternity in your flying bookshop together, hiding out in some distant star system, and no one will ever find us. That wouldn’t be too bad, would it? You and me, driving each nuts for the rest of time?”

Despite himself, Aziraphale looked up with a small smile at Crowley. “No, I suppose that wouldn’t be too bad at all.” 

Crowley nodded. “Exactly. So, we've got nothing to be afraid of. But that won’t happen, sad to say, because we both love this world, and we are going to protect it. With our magic and the help of good old-fashioned human cleverness,” he said, nodding around at the borrowed technological marvels that they were steadily arming the bookshop with, “we’re going to win. Because we’re going to save everyone. Isn’t that what you’re always saying?”

Aziraphale laughed. “Yes, you’re right. Yes. Yes, we’re going to save everyone.” His demonic eyes sparkled with eager determination. “Humans, angels, demons, everyone. Who else can do it but us?”

“Right! That’s my demon.” Crowley clapped Aziraphale affectionately on the back. He let go of him. “Now, come on. Let’s get this show on the road. I’ve got a lot of work to do on cleaning up the hangar deck down below before I’d let the Bentley fly into it. ”

“Wait!” Aziraphale said quickly, after a moment’s hesitation. “Hold on. Don’t go yet. There’s something I want to give you right away.”

This confused Crowley. “Eh?”

“First, do you have the items I asked for?”

“What? Oh, uh, yeah. I’ve got them here.” Without asking any questions, Crowley went to fetch the satchel that he’d already forgotten about on the mechanical stairwell. He picked up the bag and dumped the contents into his hands. It was a bizarre collection of objects including a large bowl, a flask of spring water, several ground spices, dried leaves and flowers, dry rice, and small pieces of wood. “Is this correct?”

“Yes, yes, thank you!” With a very busy and eager manner, Aziraphale took all the ingredients from Crowley and threw them into the bowl. Without explaining what he was doing, he placed the bowl in the centre of the salt sigil on the ground and used his fiery demonic breath to set it aflame. 

Next, Aziraphale muttered some words from a dead language. The salt lit up a bright blue colour, and the contents of the bowl soon melted into a similarly light blue, fluorescent liquid. A tiny poof of sparkling smoke rose from the bowl as the mixture finished melting.

Crowley tilted his head at the concoction in mild curiosity, watching Aziraphale work his arcane magic. “You know, you’ve got a lot better at this human magic stuff since I saw you use it at Warlock’s birthday party.” 

“Why, thank you, dear,” Aziraphale replied proudly without looking away from his work. “I was out of practice then. I’m very much in practice these days.”

Crowley personally knew nothing about arcane magic. It was a very different sort of magic to the divine magic that ethereal beings used. In fact, angels and demons alike both frowned very heavily on its use. However, Crowley and Aziraphale were long past caring about what other angels and demons frowned upon.

“Now, let’s see how it turned out, shall we?” Aziraphale took two glass vials from a drawer in his desk, and carefully poured the contents of the bowl into the two vials. “The consistency is perfect. Yes, I think I’ve got it!” With a fresh spring in his step, he returned to Crowley to show him the vials. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“What is it?”

“These are teleportation potions. A sip of this potion will return the drinker to exactly where the potion was first concocted, or in other words, to this very spot. This vial is for you, and I will take this other one. Isn’t it incredible? It’s old arcane magic!” Aziraphale said with a low voice that thrummed with excitement. “Isn’t that fun?”

“Sure, whatever you say.” 

There was a reason why Crowley preferred to do the tinkering while Aziraphale took care of the magical side of things. Crowley wasn’t as interested in reading or fancy magic, though he did enjoy seeing Aziraphale be so enthusiastic about it.

Crowley glanced over the vial, staring at its brightly glowing colour. “Not that I was worried, but I gotta admit, this is a weight off my mind. Being able to teleport back here in an emergency is pretty useful.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Aziraphale said pointedly, “because I’m not letting you leave the bookshop without it again. I’m sick and tired of sending you away to fetch raw ingredients for me without any kind of protection. This retreating potion may not be much, but it is the best we can do, given how terribly outnumbered we would be in any kind of fight. Please don’t use the potion frivolously, though, if you can help it. It is a rather troublesome potion to prepare.”

“I’ll be careful with it.” Crowley stuffed the vial into the side of his tool belt. “Thanks.”

Aziraphale smiled proudly and held his hands behind his back. “You’re very welcome, my dear.”

“You know,” Crowley said after a moment’s pause, “once we’ve launched the satellites and used them to bind the Earth with your sigil, then no angels or demons will be able to use any magic anywhere in the world. That includes us. We won’t even be able to use our wings." "Yes, I know." "Well, the thing is, if we ever get separated for some reason, then these vials might be the only way we can get back to each other.”

Aziraphale hummed thoughtfully. “That’s true. Perhaps I should make more of these potions?”

“Actually, I was gonna ask if there were any other helpful potions that you could make. One that I could use to find out where you, maybe?” Crowley said quietly. “Or at least to check that you’re all right when I’m not home?”

Without missing a beat, Aziraphale let out a boisterous laugh. 

Crowley’s face turned as red as his tie. “Damn it.”

“So you worry about me, too! Whatever happened to ‘nothing’s going to happen’, I wonder?”

“Fine, yeah! I worry, a little.” Crowley crossed his arms, trying and failing to look tough and assertive. “Okay, I worry a lot. Of course I bloody worry. You’re important to me, and you’re in just as much danger as me when you’re hanging around in your bookshop, if not more.”

“Well, I’ll have to take another look in my wondrous books of spells and see if I can do something for that, then,” Aziraphale said with exaggerated sweetness, batting his eyes at a very flustered Crowley. “I'd hate to make my dear, kind angel worry so much about me.”

Blushing like mad, Crowley bowed his head. “I’m just… gonna go on to the hangar now…”

“Hm, are you sure about that?” Aziraphale’s voice thick with temptation. He took a step closer to Crowley. “I would have liked to be held just once more. One more quick little hug wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

The temptation worked like a charm. The loving and protective hug that the angel immediately gave his cute demon was neither quick nor little.

Aziraphale relaxed into the embrace. He smiled warmly into Crowley’s shoulder. “Even if our plan works,” he said gently, “and we don’t go hide in some distant star system, we’ll still be driving each other nuts in this ship for the rest of time, won’t we?”

“Yeah, we definitely will,” Crowley answered with equal softness, hugging his precious demon more tightly. “Even when the last sun burns out, you’ll still be stuck with me.” He paused, then added slyly. “Here in our bookship.”

The soft mood that had fallen over them was abruptly broken by Aziraphale’s laughter. “I thought that you didn’t like that name! You begged me not to call it that.”

Crowley hummed noncommittally. “Well, that reminds me of something. I’ve got a surprise for you, sweetheart. Come down to the hangar with me. I’ve got something on the drying rack that I want you to see. Come on, let me show you.”

Once more, Crowley stepped onto the circular stairway with Aziraphale. The demon gave the yellow handle a few more tugs and the stairs loudly descended down one more floor. 

Cylindrical, yellow-orange lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling in little brass fixtures flickered as the pair descended.

Unlike the rest of the ship, the hangar bay was all Crowley’s. It was a little colder here than in the rest of the bookshop, and there were only a few large plants set against the walls. Six completed artificial satellite machines were lying to one side, fully functional and painted in shades of gold, brown, and reddish-brown. Next to them was a large empty space perfectly sized for the Bentley.

The door to the boiler room was at the back of the hangar bay, opposite the wall that had been converted into an enormous hangar bay door. Near one side of the bay door, there was an empty paint-stained tarp on the floor and a drying rack full of metal things with fresh coats of spray paint.

Crowley let go of Aziraphale and sauntered over to drying rack. He plucked off a giant metal slab, about the size of a traffic sign. He tested its paint with his finger, then grinned with satisfaction and picked it up with both hands to show it to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, who was full of eager curiosity, quickly came over. He tilted his head to try and see what the demon was holding. Then he covered his mouth with his hands and gasped in surprise.

It was a metal nameplate embossed in gold with the word _Bookship_ against a brown background. “I figured, I’m an angel. I’m supposed to do nice things, right? And this was the nice thing to do. So, here’s me doing the nice thing.”

“You’re letting me call it the _Bookship_!” Aziraphale fawned, his hands clenching together in a gesture of gratitude. There were real tears of joy in his eyes. “Oh, my dear Crowley!”

Crowley bowed his head shyly, though he was smiling. “Hey, hey, come on. It’s just a sign. It’s nothing much, really…”

“This is marvellous! Come! Come!” Aziraphale clapped Crowley’s back, pushing him slightly. “We must install it at once! I will hang it up prominently in the shop, right at the top of the archway that leads to the back room!”

“What? Whoa! Slow down! I’m glad you like it, but you can’t hang it up now! This is supposed to be for later, for whenever we can finally launch the ship without worry for secrecy.”

“Oh, please! No one will know what the sign means. No one will even notice the sign. Humans are very unobservant. Anyone who happens to notice it will just think of it as a cute little joke. Come, I insist! It is going to look absolutely splendid in the shop!”

Crowley opened his lips to argue, but Aziraphale’s firm manner and twinkling slitted eyes told him that there was no use arguing.

With Crowley once again leading the way, they rode the circular stairway lift up to the top level, passing by the hangar bay and the workshop level, until they were once again in the main room of the bookshop. They stepped off and Aziraphale pushed the lift’s lever down, bringing the lift back up to the ceiling and closing the hatch that led down below.

Everything one was again as it should be in a normal bookshop.

Crowley set the giant nameplate down, then picked up a short step ladder that was leaning on the wall by Aziraphale’s desk and moved it over to the backroom’s archway. He ascended the short steps and marked the spots for the nails with a piece of chalk and a spirit level that he took from his leather tool pouches. Then he armed himself with a hammer and two nails. He expertly nailed the metal plate into place.

Aziraphale stood by and watched. “My handy mechanic,” he cooed sweetly. 

Crowley grinned at the praise. “Well, you know how it is,” he said as he hammered away. “I better get good at doing this stuff by hand now, while I still have the magic to fix the mistakes.” When the plate was in place, he put away his tools and got down from the step ladder. He moved the ladder away, then returned to Aziraphale. “How does it look?”

The new gold-and-brown nameplate for the _Bookship_ gleamed proudly for all to see. Aziraphale was thoroughly delighted. “It looks perfect! Thank you, my dear. What a generous gift you’ve given me. I’ll admire it every day. Now, since we’ve christened our ship with a name, we must have a little ship christening celebration! I’ll break out a bottle of your favourite red wine.”

“You’re kidding! We haven’t even got to work downstairs yet.”

“Technically, we’ve both been working all day. One little drink won’t hurt, will it?” He tilted his head cutely and batted his eyelashes at Crowley. “Can’t I tempt you to a bottle?”

Crowley sighed. “Just one bottle,” he said. “Then we work.”

“Just one bottle?” Aziraphale snaked an arm around the angel. He spoke in rich tones of pure temptation. “If we use magic, we can make one bottle last a very long time.”

A small, nostalgic smile graced Crowley’s features. "You little devil. It’ll be like old times, huh?”

“Why, yes,” the demon agreed with an air of sentimentality. “Like old times, when we didn't have any care in the world. Just this once. How about it?”

Crowley stayed strong for a few seconds, thinking it over. Then he asked quietly, “Red wine, you said?”

Smiling wide like the demon the was, Aziraphale very cheerfully nodded and led Crowley past the Bohemian-style curtain that hung under the archway. The curtain fell again as they disappeared together into the backroom.


End file.
